Financial Services & Vancouver Architect Forums

About: This post describes the upcoming Financial Services Architect Forum (Toronto) and the Vancouver Architect Forum in Canada. I will post the highlights of the forums to the blog as well. There is no cost for becoming a member of the forum, however, membership is limited and is by invitation only.

Hello Everyone,

I am organizing two events in February in Toronto and Vancouver that will provide an opportunity for architects to share best practices and real-world experiences with both J2EE and .NET technologies with each other. Please let me know if you are interested in attending the forums yourself or want to nominate someone that you feel will benefit from this event. We have assembled a very distinguished set of speakers from Microsoft, partner and the customer community and am hopeful that it will be an extremely useful event for the attendees. Some of the speakers and panelists include:

For Financial Services Architect Forum (to be held in Toronto)

1.      Vice President of Architecture for Royal Bank of Canada, addressing the role of architecture in a large enterprise

2.      Founding architect of Amberpoint Inc. (http://www.amberpoint.com), addressing SOA governance and management of J2EE and .NET services

3.      Architects from Scotia Bank and Manulife discussing Identity Management and Federation

4.      Architects from Bank of Montreal and other financial institutions discussing Data Center Virtualization

5.      Director of financial services and Director of platform evangelism at Microsoft Canada discussing the importance of interoperability and Microsoft’s commitment to financial services, interoperability and architecture

6.      Demonstration of Windows Vista and Office 12 by Microsoft

7.      Yours truly, hosting the event and addressing the issue of justifying IT projects to business stakeholders

(And yes I can confirm the rumor that we are going to give away an XBOX 360 at the end of this forum!)

For Vancouver Architect Forum

1.      Chief architect of J-Integra (http://j-integra.intrinsyc.com/), addressing J2EE and .NET interoperability

2.      Founding architect of Amberpoint Inc. (http://www.amberpoint.com), addressing SOA governance and management of J2EE and .NET services

3.      Architects from Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, Vancity and Tourism BC discussing real-life implementations of Service oriented architecture

4.      Architects from Campell Associates and two other Vancouver companies discussing Data Center Virtualization

5.      Demonstration of Windows Vista and Office 12 by Microsoft

6.      Yours truly, hosting the event and addressing the issue of justifying IT projects to business stakeholders

We decided to organize these forums because although there is no shortage of marketing materials, abstract ideas and visionary theories about the optimal way to utilize technology, there is very little opportunity to discuss the practical and real lessons learned by organizations who have attempted to implement some of these ideas. If IT is going to achieve its promised benefits, we must leverage the knowledge and experience within the IT community; I have set up the architect forums facilitate this objective. There is no cost for becoming a member of the forum, however, membership is limited and is by invitation only.

Please let me know if you are interested in attending either of these forums where the top fifty enterprise, solution and infrastructure architects will get a chance to discuss the realities of executing IT projects. Many of these lessons are technology-agnostic and based on customer feedback, the February forums will have specific discussions around best practices for a diverse environment containing .NET, J2EE and other technologies. I hope to meet some of you at the forums!

Best regards,

Mohammad